Free air on plain film: Do we need a computed tomography too?

Context: Standard teaching is that patients with pneumoperitoneum on plain X-ray and clinical signs of abdominal pathology should undergo urgent surgery. It is unknown if abdominal computed tomography (CT) provides additional useful information in this scenario.

Aims: The aim of this study is to determine whether or not CT scanning after identification of pneumoperitoneum on plain X-ray changes clinical management or outcomes.

Central venous access by trainees: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the use of simulation to improve success rate on patients.

Introduction: Simulation training for invasive procedures may improve patient safety by enabling efficient training. This study is a meta-analysis with rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria designed to assess the real patient procedural success of simulation training for central venous access.

Methods: Published randomized controlled trials and prospective 2-group cohort studies that used simulation for the training of procedures involving central venous access were identified.

Prioritizing essential surgery and safe anesthesia for the Post-2015 Development Agenda: operative capacities of 78 district hospitals in 7 low- and middle-income countries.

Background: Surgery has been neglected in low- and middle-income countries for decades. It is vital that the Post-2015 Development Agenda reflect that surgery is an important part of a comprehensive global health care delivery model. We compare the operative capacities of multiple low- and middle-income countries and identify critical gaps in surgical infrastructure.

Excessively long hospital stays after trauma are not related to the severity of illness: let's aim to the right target!

Importance: Reduction in length of hospital stay is a veritable target in reducing the overall costs of health care. However, many existing approaches are flawed because the assumptions of what cause excessive length of stay are incorrect; we methodically identified the right targets in this study.

Objective: To identify the causes of excessively prolonged hospitalization (ExProH) in trauma patients.

Purification and molecular cloning of and immunization with Ancylostoma ceylanicum excretory-secretory protein 2, an immunoreactive protein produced by adult hookworms.

Hookworms remain major agents of global morbidity, and vaccination against these bloodfeeding parasites may be an attractive complement to conventional control methods. Here we describe the cloning of Ancylostoma ceylanicum excretory-secretory protein 2 (AceES-2), a novel immunoreactive protein produced by adult worms. Native AceES-2 was purified from excretory-secretory (ES) products by reverse-phase high-pressure liquid chromatography, subjected to amino-terminal sequencing, and cloned from adult worm RNA by using reverse transcription-PCR.